The Little Things
by Kaoru-chibimaster
Summary: It's a small world after all...well actually it's big and scary and there's flying cheese.


A/N: I'm not active on this site anymore so this will be my last fic on here. I've moved over to AO3 (same username but with an underscore instead of a hyphen) so all my new stuff is there. Anyway, Happy Akuroku Day!

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"I almost got killed by a flying piece of cheese today."

Axel looked up from his crumb fort –jeez he must've really been bored– to raise an eyebrow at his partner.

"Wanna elaborate on that, Rox?"

Roxas couldn't for the life of him see what was so difficult to understand there. He almost got killed by a piece of flying cheese. Simple.

Although there was a bit of a story behind it.

"So," Roxas started, settling himself down beside Axel, leaning into the fiery-haired hob when he'd placed an arm around Roxas' back. "I went out today, you know just doing my regular job, and all of a sudden one of the humans drops a half a piece of cheese. Seriously, how much of a klutz could she be? I had to damn near sprint for my life just to escape the yellowy claws of death back there."

Axel did manage hold back his laughter, but only barely. His green eyes lit up with amusement and mirth.

"Must've been mortifying."

Roxas pouted at the sarcastic quip. Of course it was mortifying. Who wanted to be killed by a stray chunk of cheese some housewife couldn't keep a hold of? Sheesh, that woman could be messy. No wonder she needed an entire community of Brownies. Roxas was sure he and the rest of his little community would be more than happy to book it if it wasn't for the fact that she clearly wasn't doing it on purpose and seemed not to actually expect her tiny houseguests to clean up after her. Despite the fact that they did anyway. At least she was nice enough to leave them good food in the mornings and evenings. And chocolate. She tended to buy really good chocolate to leave as gifts for the Brownies. Everyone loved this house too much to admit that they also kinda hated it. No way could they be lazy with Mrs. Klutz and her Mini-Me of a son living there.

They also had to be careful because Mrs. Klutz tended to drop food when cooking. A lot.

So yes. It was mortifying.

"Next time, I'm gonna send you out there so you can be crushed by half a slice of bread."

Axel laughed.

"Roxas, we all know only the boss can send me out there. And anyway, my job's not in the kitchen. I'm supposed to be in the living room stoking the fire. It's a chilly winter after all."

Roxas grumbled at that. Of course Axel got the easy job. Their host family lived on a godforsaken tropical island, they rarely used their fireplace. It was a chilly winter this year, hence the use of it at all this time around, but even then fires in this house's fireplace were rare. Axel barely ever left their haven in the attic for any reason other than to enjoy himself. Not that he didn't occasionally help Roxas and their best friend Xion out with their jobs, but even then he wasn't in the kitchen often enough to warrant getting sent out there for any reason. Not since the family switched to an electric stove. Now the cooking domain was left to Larxene…which was a terrifying thought in and of itself.

"Well don't fall in it or something."

"Ouch," Axel jokingly winced. "I'm getting bad vibes from that one. You don't seriously want little old me to fall in the fire, do you?"

Judging from Axel's general appearance and fondness for the flame, Roxas was surprised he didn't bathe in it.

But no, Roxas didn't seriously want him to fall in the fire. He was genuinely just upset that he almost lost his life to a hunk of cheddar.

"What are you even up to anyway?" Roxas asked, changing the subject rather abruptly and, purposefully he mischievously admitted, leaving Axel guessing about what his answer would have been. Axel blinked a few times, taking a moment to catch up with the change in tune.

"What, this?" he asked, pointing at his crumb fort. "The kid came up here last night with a handful of cookies and a box of legos. He left these behind, so I figured I'd entertain myself with them."

The kid, who had a name but no one used it, was the second resident of the house and the bane of the brownies' existence at this point. That child could be so messy it almost hurt. At this point, Roxas wasn't surprised that Axel might be using the kid's mess as a means of entertainment. Though why he came up into the attic of all places to eat cookies and play with legos was anybody's guess.

"Anyway," Axel continued. "I actually got kinda into it, but really I'm just avoiding going downstairs."

"Why's that?"

"The lady of the house is having company, haven't you heard? That's probably why she's in the kitchen slaving over cheese," Axel joked. Roxas, grinning, nudged him with an elbow.

"You can laugh all you want, it was still terrifying," he said.

"What's terrifying is that if the lady is having company, her kid probably is too."

"He does, actually. I heard his mom telling him about it," Roxas mentioned. Axel looked up at that, curious.

"Thought so. Which one? Silver hair or redhead?"

"Silver."

"Aw man. Wish it was Red. I like her, she's spunky. That silver haired kid's a little shit."

Roxas snorted at that.

"He's not so bad."

Axel scoffed lightly at that. "He's cockier than I am. And that's saying something."

"Axel, no one's cockier than you. And anyway, you only like the redhead because you finally have someone who shares your ridiculous hair color," Roxas laughed.

"Face it, Rox, you love my hair color."

Roxas loved a lot of things about Axel. His obnoxious hair color was not one of them.

"Guys!" Both hobs looked over by the large crack in the attic wall, where their friend Xion was poking her head out. "Mayday!"

Roxas raised an eyebrow at that. What exactly could have happened cause Xion to _panic_ of all things?

"'Sup, Xion?" Axel asked, standing up from his work on the crumb fort. Xion, despite her outburst, gave the small mountain of crumbs a quizzical look before continuing.

"You know how Marluxia and the others are on basement duty? There was an avalanche. The kid knocked over a stack of papers trying to get something for his mom and ended up almost crushing half of our community."

Axel, expectedly, started cackling.

"That's what those bozos get!"

Roxas, on the other hand, knew exactly what was coming next and grimaced.

"It's not funny Axel, we have to help them out of the paper avalanche now," Xion huffed. Axel's laughter stopped short, and he grimaced alongside Roxas.

"Seriously? If anything, the kid did us a favor. I'm pretty sure Marluxia and Larxene are in the middle of some nefarious plot to take over."

"You and all the rest of us think that way, Axel. Now let's go," Xion sighed, disappearing back into the wall crack.

Sighing, Axel heaved himself up from his crumb fort, grabbing Roxas' hand to bring him along. He wasn't subjecting himself to the basement members without someone to keep him company. At least, that was his typical reasoning. Roxas figured it was really because he needed someone to focus on that he didn't want to push into the fire place.

All three of them started their descent through the walls, uninterested in moving about in the open where the humans could see them, as they headed towards the basement. They had a straightforward route set before them, having nestled in a house that was older than even they were (and they were quite old) so there were no intricacies beyond the basic wooden structure and the few wiry updates that came along with the improvement of technology. Roxas ducked under a wooden beam, wary of the loud creaking that came from their movements. An old house indeed, and it was due to start falling apart. But of course, no one planned on moving out, human or otherwise, as they had all grown too comfortable in that house. They had been around since the lady of the house had been a tot, making dangerous messes of her own. And when her own mother had done so, and her father, and his mother, and so on. They could deal with a paper avalanche, no doubt.

At least, Roxas figured they could. Hoped they could… Pleaded they could.

Because _of course_ once they reached the basement, the sounds of shouting and loud sobbing met their ears. Roxas rolled his eyes. It sounded like someone was being overdramatic.

"I left my sitar down heeeere!"

Yup. It was Demyx. Behind him, Xigbar sat at the edge of the wooden desk the stack of papers had fallen from, watching in amusement as the fiasco unfolded. Roxas, Axel and Xion pulled themselves fully out of the basement ceiling crack, hopping down onto a bookshelf and shimmying their way over to the desk as well. Below, a number of housemates scurried along the floor, carrying paper from where it scattered up to its place on the desk, as a few more that were level to the trio attempted to lift the avalanche off of the members it buried.

"Hey Xig, how goes it?" Axel asked, jerking his chin towards the work effort.

"Not as bad as it seems," Xigbar shrugged. "Everyone's alive at least."

"No they're not! No way Arpeggio survived that!"

Xigbar rolled his eyes at Demyx.

"How about you stop being lazy and go fish your little guitar out of the pile instead of whining."

" _Sitar_."

"No one cares."

"You call him out, but I don't see you doing anything to help," Roxas said, crossing his arms. Not that he had much room to speak, as he hadn't made a step forward to actually help either, but he was certain Saïx would rope him and the other two into it eventually.

"As if I'm throwing my back out to help those idiots. They oughta know better than to stand under stacks of paper anyway. If anything, they should me helping me. I'm an old dude."

Yeah, right. Roxas would like to find the hob as spry as 'Old' Xigbar.

"We're all old, Xigbar," Xion called him out.

"Older. Look, instead of grilling me, you all could be making yourselves useful. Even your sister is helping, look!"

Xigbar pointed over to the small blonde hob, happily plucking blank papers out of the avalanche to draw on later. It wasn't her helping so much as her own goals aligning with the bigger one: saving the basement dwellers from certain doom.

Now Roxas didn't feel so bad about almost getting crushed by cheese.

"You three!" Saïx suddenly barked at them. "Instead of standing around, grab some papers and get to work!"

All three cringed slightly as his voice rang in their ears. No one dared point out that Saïx was only standing over the rest of the members and shouting orders at them. No one wanted to listen to him chew them out for the rest of the day.

Sighing, Xion was the first to approach the avalanche, Axel and Roxas following behind. They eyed a particularly large clump of wrinkled papers, wondering who they'd find under it.

"If someone doesn't get me out of here now, I'm going to put one end of a fork through the first person I see and stick the other end in an outlet!" came the muffled voice.

Yeah, they were skipping that one. They could already guess who was under there.

"Let's try this one," Xion said as she pointed to another conspicuously large lump of paper. She and Axel grabbed the sides of the messy stack while Roxas grabbed the front. They all pulled a small collection of papers away, passing them off to Lexaeus who, being the tallest of the bunch, was stacking them back neatly into what was likely their original pile.

In fact, speaking of… Where was the human kid who caused the mess in the first place?

Roxas looked around as he grabbed another handful of papers, his eyes skimming the dim basement—Ah. There he is. The kid was sitting at the stairs, staring in wonder at the small community of house brownies. He couldn't understand their language, and frankly he wasn't really supposed to look at them for this long, but he didn't seem to mind or care as he continued to stare blatantly. It couldn't be helped, Roxas supposed. They wouldn't risk letting their members lay under stacks of paper for who knew how long as they waited for a human to clean up the mess. Someone would definitely get hurt that way.

"Roxas, c'mon. Ignore the kid, we've still got a few more papers," Axel called to him. Roxas turned away from the human and continued pulling papers off of whatever members were stuck under them. He raised as eyebrow as Naminé dropped by, her eyes searching over the scattered mess for any blank sheets.

"Are you seriously using this as an opportunity to steal paper to draw on?" Roxas asked as she pulled a sheet from his hands, deeming it empty enough to be potentially unimportant to the humans.

"Well it's not like I can ask for paper. Marluxia would probably say no and Xemnas would definitely say no, so when opportunity knocks you have to open the door," Naminé responded. Xion rolled her eyes.

"You know you'll have to put it back when they find out."

"…Xion?"

"I'm not hoarding paper for you!"

Naminé pouted, though all three of them noticed that she didn't put back any of the paper she nicked.

"Are you four done yet?" came yet another voice from under the pile. Another recognizable voice. Roxas grimaced as the final sheets of paper were pulled away, revealing an irate Vexen and an exasperated Zexion.

"Took you long enough. Though it would have been quicker were it not for all your prattling!" Vexen continued, baring his teeth slightly as he sneered at all of them. Roxas found himself suddenly hoping he was the first person Larxene saw. Two birds, one stone, as far as he saw it. A slightly mean way of looking at it, but when one spent decades living under Vexen's constant belittling, one often found themselves thinking similar thoughts.

"Give it a rest, old man, before I shove you in the fire place."

In Axel's case, thinking similar thoughts out loud.

"If we could cease with the meaningless bickering and collect the other members?" Zexion cut in, picking himself up from the surface of the desk. He and Vexen went on to do exactly that. The remaining four simply looked at each other and shrugged.

"I'm going in the opposite direction of wherever Larxene is," Naminé started. She was cut off by three voices stating "that way" in unison as they all pointed their thumbs behind them. "Okay, it looks like I'm going back the way I came."

"I'll come with you," Xion said. "I might as well help you find a crevice to stash all these papers in before you crush yourself trying to do it alone."

Naminé smiled at that. It looked sweet, but everyone knew it simply meant she scored a sucker. Her usual sucker: her sister.

"Well, if they're ditching work…" Axel started.

"Axel," Roxas warned.

"Hey, we helped! We got two people out of their papery death traps!"

Well… He wasn't _wrong_ …

"…You wanna head back up to the kitchen with me and see if the lady of the house left out some food for us?"

"Now, you're speaking my language!" Axel grinned, placing an arm around Roxas to squeeze his shoulder lightly before they climbed down from the desk, using shelf handles and imperfections in the woodcraft as stepping stones. They'd have to climb the stairs, a dangerous and arduous feat, but they didn't so much mind. What with all the work going on, they'd have plenty of time to reach the ground floor before anyone noticed they were gone.

Besides, they had a head start if anyone did notice.

As they reached the stairs, Roxas blinked in surprise when the human kid suddenly jumped up from his perch. All movement from the brownies collectively halted as they waited for what he would do. He crouched down in front of Axel and Roxas, holding a hand to the ground with his palm up. They glanced at each other, unsure of whether or not they should take the offer. It was taboo for a human to touch a brownie, but they doubted the kid meant any harm. And judging by the now distant shouting of an angry Saïx, they were better off taking this option anyway.

They both figured they were in for it though, once they stepped onto the offered palm. The child brought his hand up to his face, staring again in fascination at the small creatures he held. Finally, after a long moment of simply watching them, he started back up the stairs, carrying them carefully with both hands now. Roxas sat down, Axel following the movement, as they enjoyed the unexpected but much appreciated ride.

"This is new," Axel said. Roxas nodded in agreement. Never before now had they even interacted with the humans living in this house, let alone allow themselves to be touched by them.

It was an odd experience. Their hair blew in the wind generated by the much faster movement of a being much larger than them. They'd never got anywhere nearly this fast before, nor had they ever been this high off the ground with nothing concrete under their feet to break their fall. The feel of human skin was ridiculously warm, and they could feel the area around them pulsing rhythmically with the flow of blood. They could even clearly hear the kid's heartbeat. Strange, indeed.

"New, definitely. Weird, absolutely. And I'm kinda praying he doesn't drop us," Roxas responded. He looked up to find the kid concentrating on each step as he climbed the stairs. Considerate of him.

"I think we'll be fine," Axel said, leaning back on his arms.

"Until Xemnas gets to us for ditching the basement dwellers."

Axel chuckled a bit at that.

"We'll drop some excuse on him. Say it's our anniversary or something."

Roxas laughed with him. "That's not even for a few more days."

"Close enough. You think he'll notice?"

"You think he'll care?" Roxas shot back.

"Nope." Axel's lips popped on the last syllable. "But who cares? We deserve some time off. You did almost get killed by cheese, after all. I'm honestly surprised you want to go back to the kitchen"

At that, the kid finally reached the top of the stairs and set both of them down. He watched them for a bit longer before his name was called, and he ran off to the source of the voice. Likely his mother asking about the papers he dropped. They stared after him for a moment before Roxas turned to Axel and shrugged.

"I'll have to go back eventually anyway. No point in avoiding it. I'll just…make sure to stay away from the island."

"Ah, the scene of the crime," Axel joked, threading his fingers through Roxas' and pulling him in the direction of said kitchen. Roxas rolled his eyes but followed along, squeezing his partner's hand.

Neither of them paid any attention to the shouts of their community from the basement as the renewed stack of paper fell over yet again, burying the majority of them under it. Again.


End file.
